Leaks may have spoiled much chance of surprise, but the Hart Senate building room was nevertheless filled with reporters. Helping ensure they got the story they wanted was public-relations giant Edelman, which only two weeks prior had won a contract to handle the media event.

The United States Institute for Peace, using funds appropriated by Congress, awarded the contract to Edelman on Nov. 20, choosing the firm over three others and warning executives that they should be prepared to do a fair amount of pro bono work, which turned out to be the case.

“We provided a lot of free work,” said Rob Rehg, who heads up Edelman’s 200-person Washington office.

Congress appropriated $1 million for the study group, which included money for travel and administration expenses. The firm got much less than that total, Rehg said.

Edelman did not play any role in the development of the report, nor did it develop a strategy by which the report should be spun.

Its only job was to handle the media fallout. But that proved to be a significant undertaking.

Rehg said around 40 of the 200 employees who work under him pitched in. The team included former campaign advance people who rented the black Suburbans and sedans that ferried study group members from an early morning White House briefing to the president to Capitol Hill, where they met with members and then reporters, and then to separate locations to do further interviews.

A team of former press aides and public-relations specialists handled media requests. Rehg said the group reached out to hundreds of journalists in the days preceding the report’s release.

Because of the sensitivity of the topic, Edelman tried to make sure each interviewer had at least two people to interview, one Democrat and one Republican.

To make sure everyone got a shot to ask a question, reporters were often grouped together, Rehg said. Prominent columnists, including the Chicago Tribune’s Clarence Page, The New York Times’s David Brooks and The Washington Post’s David Broder, were grouped together to interview study group members.

Schedules were tight, and reporters were generally given 20 minutes to ask their questions.

The event was the second major commission report Edelman had handled. The firm previously helped roll out the 9/11 Commission’s report. That experience had given Edelman the edge in the competition, said Ian Larsen, a spokesman for the Institute of Peace.

Craig Brownstein, Edelman’s vice president of media relations, said the experience with the 9/11 Commission had prepared the firm to be on their toes for minor crises that arise: “You are constantly calling audibles all day long.”

Former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, for example, felt “a little under the weather” after the press conference and retired to his hotel to recoup, Brownstein said.

That required a shuffling of schedules, although Eagleburger still met most of the obligations of his schedule by doing interviews via conference calls.

“He was a trooper,” Brownstein added. “In an hour or two he was up and at ’em, taping for ‘Nightline.’ ”

After the main press conference, former Secretary of State James Baker and former Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.), the co-chairmen of the study group, took cars to the United States Institute of Peace, where they did more interviews with National Public Radio and the editorial boards of The Washington Post, The New York Times and USA Today.

Baker and Hamilton then taped an interview with the “NewsHour” on PBS, Rehg said. Later they attended a reception of diplomats before taping “Larry King Live,” the final interview of a long day.

The remaining group members had been moved to Edelman’s office on I Street, where reporters were paired with usually two panel members.

Media requests remained high the following day. “CBS Evening News” anchor Katie Couric interviewed former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor about the study group’s findings.

David Frost, the British journalist, also sat down with panel members. By Saturday, the frenzy had died down. But one final flurry remained: the Sunday talk shows. With those over, so was Edelman’s work.